Better in the Past
by Captain Ryder
Summary: Some memories as better left in the past. The Doctor finds a Time Keeper device with the title of 'Stuff of Legend'  Oneshot- Doctor/Rose/Amy/Rory


_AN: I got the idea from a video from liisakee, called Postcards / Doctor/Rose(+Amy) on youtube, here's the link __.com/watch?v=erVa7kG80rE&feature=related__. Check it out._

_Just a little one shot, I meant to write other things for it, but just put it off, and this is what I got. Enjoy._

Amy and Rory were holding hands as they followed the Doctor through the museum. Or, in truth, _another museum, out of the dozens they had visited that day alone. The Doctor had recently been on a museum visiting kick, and the two humans were getting bored of his lectures._

"_Doctor, how many more of these to we have to go to?" Amy asked, her voice dragging like it did when she was irritated. _

"_Oh come on Pond. We've barely gotten started." the Doctor called back cheerfully. Amy groaned and hit her head against Rory's shoulder._

"_Doctor come on, lets go somewhere else." Rory added, thinking of the 60 odd years he had spent in the National Museum looking after the Pandorica._

"_Oh come on Rory, where's your sense of fun?" the Doctor scolded. "Every piece in here has so much history attached to it." He bounded through the rows of artifacts. _

"_Take this one for example." he said, pointing to a large, burnt and buckled piece of metal. "They think that's it's debris from the first actual alien space ship to visit earth, while in truth it's just a worn out ceremonial shield." _

_The Doctor was grinning from ear to ear, as if he had just told the best joke ever. His two companions were less then impressed by the bow ties alien. He frowned at their lack of enthusiasm. _

"_All right, if there going to sulk, I'll have to find something that will really blow their socks off." The Doctor thought to himself. He searched around the hall trying to find something suitably impressive. And he spotted it._

"_Oh you have to see this." he said, his voice bubbling. He grabbed hold of both Amy and Rory and dragged them to a small display case in the corner of the room._

_Inside the case was a small cylinder, about a 6 inches long. There seemed to be different sections of the tube that could be twisted, and make a different series of letter appear on the metal. _

"_Now I have seen one of these in ages. They only made a few hundred, and most of those where either lost or destroyed." The Doctor said, moving around the glass trying to get a better look._

"_What is it?" Rory asked, because Amy refused to. _

"_It's a Time Keeper." The Doctor said, expecting them to be wowed. Amy stared at him blankly._

"_Your this excited over an alien watch?" she asked._

"_What, why would you think it's a watch? Oh, right, Time Keeper does sound like some sort of clock like device. Well, it isn't a clock. It's a recording device." Amy was about to interrupt with another sarcastic remark, but the Doctor hurried on. _

"_No it's not like a video recording, it records time. Well, more specifically moments in time. You set it to a certain setting, like a place or person, and this little beauty will record in video all the moments from that person."_

_The humans finally looked interested._

"_You mean that you could set it to Shakespeare and it would record all the moments about him?" Rory asked. The Doctor beamed at him, Shakespeare was a good example._

"_Exactly. The information storing unit, using a psychic link, would travel pre-existing time streams and eddies, go back and observe and record every moment of Shakespeare life. Then, when it's task was done it would travel back to the moment of it's programming. Then you just plug and play Will's life."_

_There was silence for a moment while the information was processed._

"_That's actually pretty cool." Amy said at last. The Doctor smiled in triumph. "But why was there so few made?" she asked._

"_Ah… some bad case of time stalking." The Doctor said, dismissing the matter. He pulled out his sonic screw driver and began scanning the Keeper._

"_By the looks of it, this one will still play, though the information storing unit has been damaged. Some of the recording is corrupted. And I don't think the sound works anymore."_

_Amy noticed a small card on the medal, written in language that wasn't translated for her._

"_What does this say Doctor?" she asked pointing to it. He moved her out of the way for a better look._

"_It's describing what the device is. It explains that they have never been able to play the information, but the title attached to the piece is…." He stopped. His face turned a shade whiter, and he became perfectly still. _

"_What is it Doctor?" Rory asked, concerned._

"_What is it about? Is it from River again?" Amy asked, though she didn't think that anything from River would make the Doctor act like this._

"_It can't be," the Doctor began in a small voice, shaking his head, "it's got to be a coincidence. It can't."_

"_Doctor what is it?" Amy asked, feeling slightly afraid. Without warning, the Doctor brought the sonic screw driver down on the glass, shattering it. Alarms began to blare as he grabbed the device and took off running toward the TARDIS._

"_Oh not again!" Amy yelled as she and Rory took off after him, security guards yelling and starting to run after them._

_They ran into the TARDIS, the doors slamming shut behind them. Guards banged on the doors, but couldn't get in._

"_Doctor!" Amy yelled, but he didn't pay her any attention. He flipped some switches, turned some levers and pumped the pump, and the TARDIS took off into the safety of the time vortex. The Doctor immediately began to fiddle with the device, hooking it up to the TARDIS. _

"_Doctor, what is it? What's on the keeper?" The Doctor finally looked up at Rory and Amy._

"_The title of the piece is 'The Stuff of Legend." _

"_And what does that mean?" Rory asked. The Doctor didn't answer for a minute. _

"_Probably nothing. It's just, that was something that…" he was interrupted by the computer monitor coming to life. At first there was only static fizzing across, broken up by fuzzy images that they could see any detail on. Then, in a burst of color, video began to play. Two people, a man with dark hair in a brown suit, and a women with blond hair. The Doctor looked at the screen and sagged against the railing, as if all the strength had left him. _

_Amy was enchanted with the video. The picture kept cutting out, but there where moments of perfect clarity. The man and women laying on grass, talking and smiling at each other. It cuts out. The same man and women being 'knighted' by who appears to be Queen Victoria. The man in brown looks at the girl that same way Rory looks at Amy. The screen fuzzes. The same two people, this time seemingly in the 1950s, see each other across the street. Both have smiles that would have split their faces, and they rush tighter and hug._

_The screen cuts out. The two again, standing in a junky looking room, an eerie light above their heads. They talk, but there is no sound. They hold each other. Static. The two, surrounded by Daleks, static, clinging to a wall. _

_The Doctor reached over and shut the device off. Amy and Rory are startled by his sudden movement. _

"_Doctor, who are those people?" Amy asked. "I guessing from the different time periods they were in they traveled with you." The Doctor didn't answer, just stared ahead blankly. _

"_Ah come on Doctor, here I was thinking Rory and I were the first married couple you had traveling with you." The Doctor blinked._

"_Weren't married." he says. Amy grins, knowing that she can get the story out of him now._

"_Alright Doctor, tell us who they are. What's there story?" The Doctor, half smiled, as if remembering. _

"_Her name is Rose. They used to travel in the TARDIS. They had the greatest adventures, from werewolves, and ghosts to Daleks and Cybermen." His voice was happy, then his face darkened. "Then he lost her."_

"_She died?" Rory asked._

"_No, she is very much alive. She was just lost. And then," his voice broke, "then she found him again. But he had to give her up to someone very much like him. He let her go so that she could live a normal life."_

_There was silence, even the normal noises of the TARDIS were gone, as if it too could feel the pain coming from the Doctor._

"_And who was he?" Amy asked. The Doctor looked straight at her, but didn't answer. But Amy saw it in his eyes._


End file.
